A user may use a stylus to write on a touch-sensitive display surface or on a digitizing pad. This mode of entry gives the user the freedom to produce handwritten content of any form, such as alphanumeric characters, pictures, etc. However, a user may write quickly and carelessly, thereby producing ill-formed characters and pictures. As a result, the user may later have difficulty interpreting his or her writing. Alternatively, or in addition, the user may be displeased with his or her writing for aesthetic reasons.
Techniques exist for automatically beautifying handwritten content. Many of these techniques operate by attempting to match the user's handwriting with canonical characters or shapes, and then replacing the user's handwriting with these characters or shapes. For example, one such technique can use handwriting recognition to interpret characters and words that a user has written, and then replace those characters and words with their typed formal counterparts. While useful, these techniques have various shortcomings. For example, the techniques are capable of only recognizing certain handwritten content, not content having any arbitrary form. Further, these techniques may only recognize characters and shapes that are sufficiently similar to their expected canonical counterparts.